Matt Gibson
In many cases, the competitor who spends a lot of time on the loss side of a double-elimination bracket, gets more bang for his pool-playing buck than the guy (gal) who goes right into the hot seat and waits for the loss-side winner to show up. Take, for example, the two-days-before-Christmas (Dec. 23) final stop of the year on the 2023 Premier Billiards.com’s Q City 9-Ball Tour.
Matt Gibson chalked up six straight on the winners’ side of the bracket to claim the hot seat. His entry fee ($55), divided by the six matches, means he paid a little over $9 to play each match. Dustin Coe, paying the same $55, lost his opening match and by the time he finished with the semifinals, ready to face Gibson in the finals, he’d played 11 matches. Same $55 entry fee, but Coe only had to pay $5 per match. Sounds like a per-match, almost half-price bargain for the loss-side guy.
Gibson and Coe opted out of a final match and split the top two cash prizes. As the undefeated occupant of the hot seat at the time of the negotiations, Gibson became the official winner of the $500-added event that had drawn 51 entrants to Action Billiards in Inman, SC.
Gibson’s trip to the hot seat match was impressive. Were it not for the result of a single match that went double-hill in the third round, Gibson would have claimed the hot seat with an aggregate score of 25-2. He’d given up a rack in his opening match to Brandon Womack, none at all to Katelyn Ray and Josh Ball, before giving up another one in a winners’ side semifinal against Steven Ellis.
The double-hill match that made Gibson’s actual aggregate score when he claimed the hot seat 30-8 was against 14-year-old Jas Makhani, who’d been responsible for sending Coe to the loss side in the opening round. Makhani managed to get six of the seven he needed to win the match against Gibson, but Gibson got the five he needed to advance, winning all but one of his next 10 games to claim the hot seat.
Chad Hill, in the meantime, had gotten by Scott Ward (2), Jamison Belcher (3), Alex Ruiz (0) and Mattew Lumston (double hill), to meet and defeat Kelly Farrar 5-3 in the other winners’ side semifinal. Then, battling for the hot seat, he became Gibson’s third shutout victim.
Meanwhile, back at the loss-side ranch, Dustin Coe was mowin’ ‘em down. Nobody chalked up more than two racks against him over his first five matches (one forfeit). In his sixth loss-side match, with Matthew Lumston racing to 8, they fought to a 6-6 tie. Coe, though, started the match with two beads on the wire in a race to Lumston’s 8. The tie was a win for Coe, who went on to eliminate Heath Russell 6-2 and draw Ellis, coming over from the winners’ side semifinal.
Kelly Farrar picked up Rudy Maybin, who’d been shut out by Brian Davis in his second match and was working on his own impressive loss-side streak. Maybin would end up winning seven on the loss side, and play as many total matches as Coe won on the loss side (10). Farrar would have been Maybin’s seventh loss-side match, but Farrar forfeited, advancing Maybin to the quarterfinals. He was joined by Coe, who’d defeated Ellis 6-5 (Ellis racing to 7).
The two hardest working men in the event played a straight-up race to 6, won by Coe 6-4. At that point, Coe and Maybin had played 20 total matches. Gibson, waiting in the hot seat for whoever emerged from the semifinals, had only played six total matches. Coe chalked up his 11th match by defeating Chad Hill in the semifinals 6-1.
The deal was made to split the top two prizes. Gibson was declared the event’s official winner and everybody went their separate ways to settle into whatever holiday festivities awaited them.
In addition to wishing all of his Q City 9-Ball Tour competitors a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, Tour Director Herman Parker thanked Scott and Lisa Green, along with their Action Billiards staff for their hospitality. He also thanked title sponsor PremierBilliards.com, BarPoolTables.net (Randy Tate), TKO Custom Cues and Realty One Group results (Kirk Overcash, who also contributed trophies), Dirty South Grind Apparel (Angela Harlan-Parker), Federal Savings Bank (Alex Narod), Diamond Brat (Tonya Crosby) and AZBilliards.
This was the Q City 9-Ball Tour’s last stop of the year. The tour will launch its 2024 season with a $500-added event, scheduled for the weekend of Jan. 6-7 and hosted by Breaktime Billiards in Winston-Salem, NC.
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